small bug in resent arc posting
Brent Byer
bb at spdcc.COM
Sat Apr 16 17:02:00 AEST 1988
In article <2460 at vice.TEK.COM> michaele at vice.TEK.COM (Michael Enkelis) writes:
>BSD4.3 unix on a VAX 11-780, Change arcusq.c
>Michael Enkelis
>503-627-4099
>
>Feed me to patch
I suggest you don't. (Unless it is Mr. Enkelis you feed to patch :-) )
>
>*** arcusq.c.orig Fri Apr 15 13:31:51 1988
>--- arcusq.c Fri Apr 15 13:32:38 1988
>***************
>*** 50,56 ****
> get_int(f) /* get an integer */
> FILE *f; /* file to get it from */
> {
>! return (getc_unp(f) | (getc_unp(f) << 8)) & 0xFFFF;
> }
>
> INT
>--- 50,56 ----
> get_int(f) /* get an integer */
> FILE *f; /* file to get it from */
> {
>! return ((getc_unp(f) << 8) | getc_unp(f)) & 0xFFFF;
> }
>
Gaaack! I am afraid that this is typical of the kind of
garbage code I recall seeing in the initial posting of
*nix 'arc' (the one that claimed to be for BSD; back in 1986).
That original posting should never have been put on the wires.
About a week later, Mike Stump ( csun!aeusemrs ) posted
a much saner version which he had cobbled together for
sysV. Interestingly, his version required about 5 minutes
effort to bring up on BSD, whereas the original one, which
claimed to be for BSD was hopeless (example(s) above).
It seems that the garbage one has prevailed.
Some would say, "Don't look a gift horse in the mouth."
But occasionally, you find that you're really looking
at the horse's arsehole. (Someone shaved it and taught
the horse to walk backwards.)
As much as I am impressed with the performance of Katz'
PKARC (on DrOsS), we Unixoids had better get a comparable
implementation here, or we should shift our support to
Dhesi's ZOO. While ZOO represents a completely different
(ie incompat) storage format, I am confident that its
implementation at least represents software engineering.
"You can't learn to program;
either you know how or you don't."
Sure, I'm feeling ornery tonight; I just gave those
b?st?rds enough money for another Bolivian buy.
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